[Quayle] was questioned about a report that he had been admitted to Indiana University Law School as part of a program designed for students whose grades and aptitude test scores were so low they would not have been admitted in the regular admission process....

Mr. Quayle acknowledged earlier that he had persuaded the dean to admit him despite poor grades at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind....

Professor [Charles] Kelso said he did not remember Mr. Quayle and was certain that neither his family nor his wealth had played any role in his admission to the course.

I remember discussing this matter at the time, perhaps with another Wisconsin law professor. My interlocutor said that an applicant who shows up in person and makes a persuasive argument demonstrates a determination and skill that might justify admitting him to law school. These are qualities, seen in person, that might not appear in the cold numbers of the LSAT and the GPA and that are in fact relevant to the applicant's aptitude for lawyering.

I said: But what about everyone else who got rejected? If they had known there was another way to get in, they might have wanted to appear in person in front of the dean and show that they too were brimming with lawyerly promise unmeasured in standardized tests. If there is a second way to get in, there should be a competition there too. The dean who let Quayle in on alternate grounds may have seen value in the man who appeared before him, but did he fully visualize the others who might have presented themselves too? Was Quayle really the best of them? The dean had no way to know.

My interlocutor retrenched: If there is a secret backdoor route into the law school, the applicant who is able to find it has manifested a special skill that would be irrelevant if the school made it plain to all that there is an alternate admissions path that uses an interview with the dean. My interlocutor had to concede that there is no way the law school dean would put up with interviews with every rejected applicant who wanted to take the trouble to show up in Indianapolis to plead his case.

I said: So a law school should make a special point of admitting the guy who realizes the official process might not be the only way to get what you want and who has the nerve to decide that his personal interests transcend the importance of equal rules for all and to take up the time of a busy person (the dean) and to promote his individual case? Well, maybe that is the attitude a client wants from his lawyer, and maybe it's okay that their lawyer couldn't score well enough on the LSAT to get into Indiana.

But I couldn't accept the law school dean's failure to treat Dan Quayle like the other rejected applicants. I thought and still think that it was the moral failing of valuing the seen over the unseen. Quayle showed up in person: Here I am, see my worthiness! But all the other rejected applicants were human beings too. Imagine them, all of them, and what they might have argued in pursuit of their goals.

***

By chance, the linked article — which I dug out of the NYT archive — contains another seen-and-unseen issue:

Outside the plant about 150 protesters carried signs that said such things as ''Draft Dodger Quayle - Who Died in Your Place?'' - a reference to his decision to join the Indiana National Guard in the Vietnam War.

If you opposed the Vietnam War and evaded the draft, did you truly visualize the person who went in your place?

It's not "affirmative action" when you admit people based on a standard than anybody can meet. If Quayle got in because he wanted it more, because he went the extra mile, what's wrong with rewarding that? That's the sort of attorney I would want, somebody who goes the extra mile.

You might want to announce, "we will let some people in if they go the extra mile," but you only do that sort of thing to help out those slow starters who sit on their ass and wait for the authorities to tell them how to behave.

One might say you are calling for affirmative action for obediant people who wait around passively for instructions. But why should we give affirmative action for passive people who wait around for instructions when they might make very bad lawyers indeed?

I not only visualized the ones who went to Viet Nam by being drafted, I knew them.

Those were interesting times.

The failure of LBJ to lay out a reason to support the South Vietnamese Regime other than young people owed it to die like our parents had in WWII left rational thinkers in a dilemma. That was not true.

The failure of authorities to speak the truth opened the door to rebellion. Which is one reason why Perry's style has a good chance in 2012.

But we saw many go and die there to prove to the world that the USA was a stronger ally than the USSR.

Thank God Nixon got elected and nine months later took us to an all volunteer military and spent the next 3 years withdrawing from that trap.

“If you opposed the Vietnam War and evaded the draft, did you truly visualize the person who went in your place?”

Exactly. What’s unseen here is unseen because it’s unseen in imagination. A failure in imagination in the first place.

When Quayle showed up in person (to erase all doubts in imagination), then it’s equally possible that any – honest – law school dean would respond to Quayle saying, “I have enough assholes in this school already, you look like a fucking spoiled 3 year-old brat in your Izod shirt and Dockers. Get the fuck off my campus. I’m looking for the next Caesar Chavez who may not fight in Vietnam, but who will fight goddam somewhere - fight for something greater than getting his lame ass into my fucking law school, GO AWAY asshole!”

There were a lot of men that registered for the draft and did not serve. Some had already enlisted and were serving somewhere besides Vietnam. Others got deferments due to medical reasons and college ala Slick Willy. A quite a few of the enlistees volunteered for duty in Nam.

We have certain political families in this countries who are the aristocrats, when it comes to admitting their under-qualified "yoots."

Roosevelt'sRockefeller'sKennedy'sBush'sQualye'sRomney's

Oh. And, the election you just saw in Brooiyn/Queens where WEPRIN, a big insider in democrapic politics didn't get elected.

So, it's really immaterial that a boob gets into college through family connections.

It's more interesting when they run for elected office and lose.

Qualye's son actually just won.

Does it mean the general public is fooled by "name recognition?"

George and Mitt Romney probably won't take their name into the White House.

And, the Rockefeller's have to be satisified with "Jay," even though now the family, like the Kennedy's, is a large one.

The person who complains about his affirmative action admission to Yale, is Clarence Thomas! He said because he's Black, people wrote off his efforts. And, they "thought" he got his degree automatically. Based on his skin color. He thinks much less of Yale because of this.

The lawyers who will probably do the best (outside of having connections to James Baker) ... will be the one's who work hard. And, who STAR!

Just like the legacy families ... you can count the outliers on one hand.

ROY BLACK

GERRY SPENCE

KEN THOMPSON

You could also point to ALL of FDR's court appointments to the Supreme's, and you'd see stars.

The women so far have all been a bust. But Sandra Day O'Connor used language skills (which tend to benefit girls, in general) ... to take control over how the votes on cases turned out.

She gets high honors because she put her opinions into the majority. And, the one with least skills turned out to be Rehnquist. Who lied. And, hid the fact he was an arrogant white poll watcher, in Arizona. As soon as he stepped into the political pool to get his feet wet.

Sandra Day O'Connor ate his lunch!

Then? We had geniuses up there who were not to pleasant to know. I'd submit William O. Douglas. (But that's just me.)

I suppose so, except for the fact that this is a necessary way to get a job if you're looking for a job.

All (nearly) applications are on-line now, for McDonald's and everything, and all an employer has is what is on your application. So you walk into the store and say, "Hey, look for my application." You call and ask if they received your resume or ask if you could meet and talk. You do *something*.

"If a thief breaks into your house at night and steals the $100 you were going to give to charity, he's showing some real initiative and desire...

"And those other folks, who don't break into houses... well, they just lack fire in the belly. That's their problem."

Did Quayle do something ILLEGAL when he appealed personally to the dean? The problem with your theft hypothetical is that it involves a crime.

How about you've got $100 that you want to donate to charity and then somebody comes and knocks on your door collecting for a charity? Aren't you going to be inclined to give the money to that charity?

I was not drafted because of various deferments, married with children being the principal one. I did not volunteer. I have always wondered how much my very active participation in anti war activities was motivated by ambivalence and guilt about my draft exempt status. The older I get the more uneasy I am about those choices.

I now live in a community with two large active military bases and many military retirees. I have good friends who served in Vietnam including some who earned important medals for combat valor. Most of them lacked the choice I had, or had made a career commitment to the military. They accept my decisions and say I was fortunate not to be there. But also they have bonds with other men that I could never penetrate.

There are many alternative lives that I could have led, based on different decisions on many subjects. This is the only one that still troubles me in any significant way, certainly because I know that someone else had to take my place.

If someone capable of writing something as stupid as the 10:40 comment can be admitted to a law school, it's preposterous to argue any other human being since the beginning of time was unqualified to be admitted to a law school.

RE Althouse RE ShoutingThomas. That was an unnecessary attack on Thomas. Isn't the premise of feminism that women receive equal opportunity and treatment in America? Shouldn't women be included in the draft? I personally abhor the idea of women in combat zones, but that's more because of my wife and daughter. I cannot imagine seeing them as I saw dead soldiers in Vietnam.

One other comment. Joining the NG was an option during Vietnam, and perhaps it could be seen as dodging. Opting for a path that is good for me is not necessarily dodging responsibility. If you opposed the war, and were drafted, joining the NG would seem to be a legal and morally justified option. As far as someone dieing in my place, do we need any more survivor guilt than is already seen in veterans?

The individual who is trying to get into law school, or medical school, or who is seriously opposed to the Vietnam war on some moral grounds, or who is trying to get accepted to a military accademy, does not have to seriously think about the others who might take his or her place. You do what is right for you. Granted you should not lie or break the law in doing so.

Dodging the draft is dicey because it is illegal (depending how you do it) but since many of the draft dodgers were opposed to the war, I think their argument would be end he war. Nobody should go.

There was a story about a kid applying to some ivy league school who checked "other" for race and said it should not be a consideration in his admission. He then did an internship with the NAACP that he did put on his application. He got into his school of choice. To me that is creative and warrants acceptance.

If you're a woman, and you were never called to serve in the Vietnam War, did you sit home and bitch about feminism?

Based on my scores and on the military aptitude test that I took at that time (1967), I was heavily recruited by the Air Force to be a navigator. Offered me all kinds of great incentives that I would get upon graduation from high school.....until they found out that I was a woman. They dropped me like a hot potato.

Well, maybe that is the attitude a client wants from his lawyer, and maybe it's okay that their lawyer couldn't score well enough on the LSAT to get into Indiana.

No comment on Quayle in particular.

But yes, a man who'll think outside the usual process, go out of his way to speak to a person with decision making authority, and make a compelling enough impression to gain access that he wouldn't ordinarily have... Yes, that's the kind of temperament I want in my attorney.

"If Quayle got in because he wanted it more, because he went the extra mile, what's wrong with rewarding that?"

If a thief breaks into your house at night and steals the $100 you were going to give to charity, he's showing some real initiative and desire...

And those other folks, who don't break into houses... well, they just lack fire in the belly. That's their problem.

Not the same thing. One is stretching a point about qualifications, the other is breaking a law about theft.

Random Arrow said...

Ann, perfect – why don’t law school deans imagine this way?

Things seen and unseen.

If you opposed the Vietnam War and evaded the draft, did you truly visualize the person who went in your place?

Exactly. What’s unseen here is unseen because it’s unseen in imagination. A failure in imagination in the first place.

When Quayle showed up in person (to erase all doubts in imagination), then it’s equally possible that any – honest – law school dean would respond to Quayle saying, “I have enough assholes in this school already, you look like a fucking spoiled 3 year-old brat in your Izod shirt and Dockers. Get the fuck off my campus. I’m looking for the next Caesar Chavez who may not fight in Vietnam, but who will fight goddam somewhere - fight for something greater than getting his lame ass into my fucking law school, GO AWAY asshole!”

Why don’t law school deans – imagine – that way?

Imagining the next phony Messiah in the Glorious World Socialist Revolution that's murdered over 100 million people? Fight for something greater - like enslaving even more people?

The right guy got in because the law school dean thought the right way.

"One might say you are calling for affirmative action for obediant people who wait around passively for instructions."

There are a lot of obedient, passive people and they often well-off, not just poor and taught not to make waves.

When homeschooling started to be a "thing" there was an early family who kept their kids home (both were professional teachers and comfortable with the "rules" of academia) and when the time came each of their boys got into Ivy League schools.

They were on a morning talk show of some sort and the audience was incredibly hostile and the hostility was because these people hadn't followed the rules. They hadn't got their baby into the right baby-care and then the pre-Ivy-daycare and then into the right preppy Kindergarten and so on and then the kids weren't forced to be the captain of anything at all, or belong to three or four different clubs and get a 4.0+ on their high school transcript from the right school.

People were pissed. THEY had followed the rules and didn't get their kid in Yale or else they had decided it was too much and hadn't tried. But it just wasn't *fair*. All these boys did was have fun and totally ace the SAT and then write up a nifty application explaining how their unique experience in education would enrich the school they were applying to.

People who follow rules get really torqued when someone else doesn't.

This is also why my husband, who had a decade as a senior level system/network engineer couldn't get a computer job in Fargo. He hadn't finished college and the people doing the hiring *had*, had followed the rules and still had crap jobs that made no money and he *hadn't* followed the rules. Who did he think he was?

Sure. Tenure. Proves yet again how bad things used to be for two old white male geezers to throw a temper tantrum about race. Lifting Gutter ... (out of the gutter.) As if this crap really matters at the end of the day.

By the way ... You bet there are STARS in ALL GROUPS! Helen Keller proved that learning is possible. And, her handicaps were across the board: Deaf. Dumb. Blind.

I wonder, too, if some day ... "revisiting statistics" 500 years from now ... if all of society will be so well blended ... it will be like John McWhorter describes all the languages we've lost. Because it's easier to communicate across our globe. (Except into "pockets" of the rain forest. And, maybe, Mongolia.)

Though I read somewhere there are "dishes" on top of yurts.

The best pushback on this subject at Madison is that it will just disappear.

Kids always sit in classrooms where they evaluate others. And, not just on academics. But on beauty, too.

Graduating form the University of Wisconsin, at Madison ... especially its law school ... Won't make a dent ... if kids who are there now ... can't find jobs when they leave.

Of course, Sandra Day O'Connor, when she left Stanford (I think back in the 1960's) ... found that white men owned all the law firms where she wanted to work. So they offered her secretarial positions.

What's it like in today's world?

Do you have to lick James Baker's shoes? (And, if you're Jewish, don't even apply.)

What will computers do ahead?

Will people pay $500 an hour for some clerk to fill out myriad forms? REALLY? (I think they'll just hit buttons. And, you won't see the "law firm," because some of them will be a Microsoft product, like Power Point.)

The way lawyers are made changes over time. Just look at how Abraham Lincoln got in there.

In SF classic Ringworld there was a subplot about a human birth lottery. You could get a random right to have a third child if you won the lottery. After six generations, the children who were successful through six generations of the lottery (out of billisons born there were several thousand who were born due to their ancestors each generation winning that lottery) were effectively genetically lucky.

Brom said...How about you've got $100 that you want to donate to charity and then somebody comes and knocks on your door collecting for a charity? Aren't you going to be inclined to give the money to that charity?

Relevant point: I'll probably be less inclined to give to that charity, because I find door-to-door soliciting obnoxious.

If five charities send me letters, five send door-to-door solicitors, and one leaves a note on my door with a phone number and a request for a moment of my time at my convenience, I'd almost certainly give them a donation even if I don't care much about their cause, just because I'd be so impressed with their creativity, ambition, and consideration.

Assuming Quayle's story is true, he similarly chose a pitch well tailored to the preferences of the person whose consideration he wanted.

There was very little military opportunity for women in the Vietnam era. Even today most women do not serve in combat and are in far less physical danger than men. Casualty statistics bear this out big time.

Indeed the vast majority of men in the military are not in combat and in far less danger than combat troops. Everyone contributes in some way, but in service there is a clear awareness of the differences.

People like Bill Maudlin and Ernie Pyle made careers of describing and satirizing these differences. Pyle died of a Japanese sniper bullet to the head while doing so.

People play all the cards in their hand, including ,of course, the ability to play the cards that are not in their hand, i.e. the ability to bluff. That's one of the big advantages the children of the well situated have. They know how to bluff. They don't think it's an imposition to ask for an interview with the Dean. They know how well mannered young men behave in such an interview. There's a back door to every mansion, and the well off not only know where it is, they know the secret knock that allows immediate admission.......Quayle played the savvy rich kid's card. Obama played the smart black kid's card. I have heard of greater inequities.

Among other things, I guess it is a valuable life lesson: people seem to have a preference for the "seen" and either do not consider, or give less weight to the "unseen." Conduct your selves accordingly.

Mark O, there are obviously very smart attorneys that graduate from Harvard. And there are obviously very smart attorneys who graduate from schools not ranked as high. Going to a good school obviously is helpful to one's career, but as they say, cream eventually rises to the top.

When I avoided the draft (by enlisting) and the Army in its (unusual) wisdom declined to send me to Nam, I imagined the guy who went in my place, presumed that he would do a better job than I would, and concluded that therefore fewer people (on our side) died as a result. I am content with that.

Brom said...Since when is joining the National Guard considered dodging the draft? It's not like he fled the country.

Liberal Democrats appear to have a great failure of imagination in this instance.

1. Failing to recognize many served the nation in alternative national service positions than "grunt in the rice paddy" role.I know a few older people who were COs that spent 2-3 years in alternate service as hospital orderlies and cleaners stateside.The Guard, with Cold War missions, was needed and necessary service to the nation, at the time.The majority of the Army, and most of the Navy and AF - were in Cold War positions and did not go to the Vietnam theater. Or were in peripheral support positions far from hostile zones.

2. Thinking someone facing the Red Army, or mopping hospital floors was guilty forevermore about "who died in their stead in Vietnam" is a concoction of some liberal Democrat who almost assuredly never served.And the few that actually did - the "embittered ex-Nam grunt" of Hollywood movies and the lecture circuit - were a small fraction of those who went...

3. As far as I know, liberal Democrats only try the gambit with those they try and label chickenhawks. No similar guilt trip is laid out by them or the progressive Jews pulling the strings in Hollywood or the media on the liberal Democrats who took "Cheneyesque student deferments", served in the narrative's Hated National Guard, or fled outright to Canada and were amnestied and pardoned by Jimmy Carter.

4. In liberal circles - they maintained no Blacklist of who were the liberal and progressive Jewish Draft Dodgers Who Fled to Canada and "let someone die in their stead" for purposes of blocking their career advancement in heavy Democrat job sectors or in political advancement within the Dem Party. For sure. Who the Draft Dodgers pardoned by Jimmy actualy were is a well-kept media secret.

Because scheduling a mutually agreed upon appointment with the dean is somehow just like a robbery? As to joining the Guard, I think it shows the same sort of self-directed action as lobbying the dean. Don't wait for someone else to make your choices for you.

I do have a hard time being too critical of affirmative action while other subjective waivers like bourgeoisie-preserving legacy admissions are in place.

David: Thanks for your story and reflection, but beware the misplaced modifier: "with other men that I could never penetrate." (NTTAWWT)

Brom said... Since when is joining the National Guard considered dodging the draft? It's not like he fled the country.

My recollection, which I admit may be wrong, is that, AT THAT TIME, joining the National Guard was a way to "serve" without being sent to Vietnam and without any actual then-current combat.

I was eligible the last year of the draft, and had a low number, 24. The draft was cut off after I passed my physical, but before I was actually drafted. I had not yet decided what I would do if drafted. Canada was probably the answer. But I'll never know.

The last thing I was thinking about was other people, including who might serve in my place.

After active duty, when I joined the Active Reserve, I found out a different problem. Because of the political decision to NOT call up the reserves, many Guard and Reserve units filled with people who had no interest in serving -- they had joined to stay OUT of the Army, not to be sort-of in it. The most effective disciplinary threat against failure to participate in required drills was to order the miscreant onto active duty. This made achieving any kind of unit proficiency very challenging. I am sure my experience was not universal, but I was in a college town, y'know.

On the other hand, the Air National Guard had an actual air defense mission in the continental US, I believe.

Many members of the Guard fought and died in VN. In the election year of 1968 LBJ decided not to use the Guard there. W joined TANG when Guard and Air Guard was serving in VN. The NG policy was always subject to change and Nixon quickly started to reduce US military forces in VN.

So Dan Quayle was both sides of the same coin? I'm not a fan, but he gets big points for taking a chance, thinking outside the box. What did he have to lose? But then...points are deducted by his draft dodging (these things have a tendency to even out over time).

Imagine them, all of them, and what they might have argued in pursuit of their goals.

But, in the end, they didn't. The rest is fiction. It worked for him b/c he was the only on that did it. He stood out, fairly or unfairly. And the truth about the rest of them is, well, you don’t know. You don’t know what became of them or in the future tense, you don’t know what will become of them. For some of those rejected, this might be one of the best things that ever happened to them. Because something looks *morally* wrong at the beginning doesn’t dictate that the story ends that way.

"Did Quayle do something ILLEGAL when he appealed personally to the dean? The problem with your theft hypothetical is that it involves a crime."

He used a route other than the official one that applied to everyone else. I'm analogizing that to violating the criminal law. You may think violating the criminal law is worse than accessing a govt-funded privilege through a door not known to the general public, but to me they are similar. It's a kind of corruption, this idea that you can cross the lines that keep others out.

We have certain political families in this countries who are the aristocrats, when it comes to admitting their under-qualified "yoots."

Roosevelt'sRockefeller'sKennedy'sBush'sQualye'sRomney's====================Certain well off and well connected families in America have somehow maintained "brainpower" through generations and not sent dolts to college. The Rockefellers and certain fabulously wealthy Jewish families like the Crowns and American branch of the Rothschilds come to mind. The Kennedy's were more hit and miss. JFK and a couple of his siblings, notably Bobby, were legitimately bright. Next Gen, only Michael Kennedy supposedly had standout brains outside skiing safety and trysts with babysitters.

FDR had 5 dolt sons, but it took historians 50 years to admit that FDR and Eleanor themselves were not particularly bright. Well-bred dolts of character.

The Romneys as aristocrats giving intergenerational student legacies? Definitely not belonging on the list, Carol Herman. George Romney was a poor refugee from the Mexican Revolution who was very bright and attended classes while working many jobs, but never finished college. 2nd gen Mitt Romney went where he went on his own merits....he was a remarkable academic, then success in the private sector that had no inheritance or legacy factoring in to his progression.

Ann's post ostensibly raises a question about equal treatment, but ends up pointing to something more interesting. Equality here co-exists with inequality -- the admissions process presupposes significant differences between candidates that are supposed to generate the actual results, by applying criteria relevant to the institution's educational objectives and goals.

It comes down to selecting the criteria to apply. Ann's post rejects seen/unseen distinctions -- for her, initiative (she might call it sheer gumption) is an irrelevant factor. Why so? She says that others might have shown similar gumption if only they knew that it might make a difference. Perhaps so, but that doesn't help much -- seeing what others don't is part of the skill. Candidates can be separated along a 'gumption' scale, and it's the ability to distinguish between them that matters.

The 'equality' model that Ann is invoking is similar to the 'equal information' model that the SEC pushes in regulating financial markets -- in order for the markets to be fair, all players must have access (it's never equal access except in theory) to all material information. Market participants in possession of non-public material information must disclose or refrain from trading. That's also the economic reason why insider trading should be a crime.

But admissions to a university is a poor fit for that equal-information model. Lawyering in particular is only partly an intellectual exercise in manipulating information. Since advocacy is a large part of it, aspects of character, judgment and active will (echos of William James there) are at least as important. A 'gumption' scale, where candidates operate against a background where it's impossible to tell in advance whether any particular action by them will help or hurt, has value. After all, it was possible that someone doing what Quayle did could just as easily have convinced the dean that he was a jerk. In Quayle's case, that might not have mattered since it sounds like he expected to be rejected if he did nothing. But other candidates could be in that 'who knows' category -- probably where most of them are who might benefit/lose by an exercise of gumption.

I suspect a market-based analysis might be a better fit in structuring the university admissions, albeit probably not one focusing on an SEC-like 'equal information' approach.

In any admissions process we deal with a lot of information that is "unequal" - grades from different schools with different courses and different teachers - letters of reference from different people. Results of interviews are just one more piece of data of this kind.

The only piece of data that is close to being directly comparable is the LSAT. A system the relied exclusively on LSAT would certainly be "fairer" in the sense that it would be based on a transparent standard that would be equally accessible to everyone. Are you advocating that?

Ann is just touchy because her world is crumbling. Even the NY Times and Politico are trashing the Palin book and she doesn't know what to make of it, so she's flailing about, grasping at straws and clumps of grass and small shrubs on her way down.

Soon enough she'll screech "police, police" and Meade will show up to call everyone who doesn't agree with her an asshole and challenge them to prove something in the narrowest of terms.

I suspect that the dean was empathetic to the person who was there in the room at the expense of people who were not there. It's a human disability, preferring those close to you. It's a good thing, in may situations, such as when you take care of your family. But when you hold a position of trust, you are morally obligated to overcome it.

Softening while looking into pleading eyes... it's a good thing except when it's not. In Quayle's case, I believe it was human frailty and an abuse of power on the part of the dean.

"It's a kind of corruption, this idea that you can cross the lines that keep others out."

When those lines are arbitrary, and when someone is sufficiently motivated to get beyond them and does so, I don't view that as "corruption." It is going outside the lines, and using some ingenuity when others passively accept "no."

And I will say that many, many jobs with ads stating "no phone calls or visits" are filled with people who called or stopped by. It is taking a chance, and perhaps not advisedly, but it shows some willingness to be aggressive when that is called for.

If you want to make initiative, performed on site and in person, a factor in the admissions to a law school, then let the games begin. All I want is an announcement in advance that there is a game to be played, and let everyone proceed.

But let's say it was a secret game in year one, and Quayle found the hidden admission ticket (like Russell on "Survivor" finding the hidden immunity idol before any announcement that there was an idol to be found). Hooray for Quayle/Russell, you'd like to say.

Okay, now what happens in year 2? I laugh at the imagined scene as every huckster in Indiana descends on the law school to promote his cause.

Imagine a few more years down the road, as Indiana is the law school full of students who found ways to hack admissions.

It's an interesting class, perhaps! But I know damned well the faculty wouldn't tolerate the annual annoying swarm of self-promoters.

Althouse at 12:02: OK, I see your point. I guess you could compare Quayle to an apple-polisher, who visits the professor's office and chats with him to get a better grade. It's not a criminal offense, but there's an element of decadence there, on the part of the polisher and polishee, that's disturbing.

When Obama's 2 kids reach 18 (and if he is still in office), I wonder if the left will demand that those 2 join the armed forces and fight in Iraq or Afghanistan like they demanded President Bush's girls do.

Althouse: "Quayle was a privileged white male with bad numbers. No way did he belong in that program."

And now you've lost me.

The program, according to the article, wasn't explicitly designed to attract minorities, as the article states. It's just that some of the administrators hoped that it would, because they're liberal and assume that all minorities are stupid.

Only 4 of the 20 that used this program were minorities.

And the idea that the color of their skin should matter one way or the other is instantly, violently offensive. If anyone qualifies for this (nonsensical) program, then everyone should.

I should hold a sign at UW-Madison saying "hey affirmative action recepiant. Do you know what the face looks like of the more qualified person who was denied admission to the school, to allow you in based soley on the skin pigment you have?

It appears we don't know exactly what motivated the dean to intervene. (Potential song title there.) Shouldn't the burden of proof be on whoever wants to charge the dean, or the system, with malfeasance?

I dislike the general trend lately toward questioning everything teachers, deans, people who hire, and even bureaucrats do. Guaranteeing a half-billion dollar loan to a private company is worth questioning. Virtually guaranteeing entry to a single school applicant is pretty small and seems to fit within the discretion of the people in charge, unless we can establish a pattern of neglect or bad behavior...like rejecting white students because they're too smart. (I wonder whether that applies to female students these days-- universities are said to be much concerned about the gender imbalance.)

"Althouse at 12:02: OK, I see your point. I guess you could compare Quayle to an apple-polisher, who visits the professor's office and chats with him to get a better grade. It's not a criminal offense, but there's an element of decadence there, on the part of the polisher and polishee, that's disturbing."

At my law school, there is a rule against changing a grade, and this is the reason. You can't have every student pestering the professors for a better grade, and then it makes every student feel that they should take the time and have the nerve to argue for a higher grade. It's totally unworkable. And corrupt!

Now, we shouldn't need a rule. I know this would be my policy, rule or no rule.

On the other hand, I believe there are cases of professors raising grades despite the rule. There's an exception for making an arithmetic error, and lawprofs may imagine that this can be exploited for a mere change of opinion about what the grade should be.

I hope you agree with me that if any professor does that, it is a very serious abuse of power.

"All I want is an announcement in advance that there is a game to be played, and let everyone proceed."

That really is the SEC 'equal playing field' model of full disclosure, and that's what needs an argument showing why it's the best fit for the admissions process. Life doesn't come with a complete set of rules, nor do most legal situations. We're always dealing with incomplete, often inaccurate, information where the rules are either too general or non-existent to generate a clear result. That's also why the judicious exercise of discretion is such a large part of life (and the law).

The 'let the games begin' caution is surely right, but misses the point. Because this particular game has been going on for a long time, a candidate has to exercise judgment and discretion in deciding whether any particular form of initiative will help or hurt. It's a fair bet (given the realities of any bureaucracy) that admissions officers (to say nothing of deans) will react negatively to anything that increases their burdens or strikes them as wasting their time. In short, the 'game' here is more subtle and potentially dangerous that your critique assumes.

By all means, let the games begin. But you better be careful how you play.

"The only piece of data that is close to being directly comparable is the LSAT. A system the relied exclusively on LSAT would certainly be "fairer" in the sense that it would be based on a transparent standard that would be equally accessible to everyone. Are you advocating that?"

Since some groups chronically score lower than others, on the average, such a proposal would never be adopted. It would be regarded as an intentional effort to exclude those groups, and as a practical reality it would, given that other schools, higher ranked schools, use affirmative action. T

God lavished a fair number of gifts on Dan Quayle. He was good looking, had rich parents, and was a scratch golfer. He has a happy marriage and healthy kids. Of all the gifts lavished upon him, I least envy his berth in the Indiana National Guard and his place in law school.....Remember the joke about 2nd prize being an extra week in Philadelphia. He got into law school. Big deal. That's not like breaking and entering. That's like being an illegal immigrant to Haiti. I'm sure Quayle spent hours staring out of the library window and cursing the malign fate that kept him off the PGA tour.....The playing field has bumps and ruts, but the historical record indicates that the steamroller used to level it has caused far worse injuries than the occasional sprained ankle.

Althouse at 12:28: I was talking not about changing a grade, but influencing it by polishing the professor's apple during the quarter. That's something that's hard to prevent with a simple rule or two.

Yes, I agree that this is wrong, of course -- on both the part of the student and the professor. I hated those rat bastards. And so I can see your point about Quayle, if we think of it in those terms.

I don't think that just Quayle didn't belong in this program; I think that no one belonged in this program, regardless of skin color. A minority student who participated in this program should feel just as dirty as Quayle should have felt.

Althouse: "Since some groups chronically score lower than others, on the average..."

Well, now we're getting to the crux of the matter.

Minorities score lower, I guess. (It's hard for me to believe, at this point, frankly. I've met enough minorities that would have scored higher than me on any test to know that there's not much difference between white, black, and hispanic any more in academic achievement.)

So how do we fix this? Do we address it by pretending that blacks with lower scores will be just as good as whites in school, and judging them by different standards? (Isn't that the very definition of condescension?)

Or do we try to address it at its roots, by doing whatever we can to increase those minorities' scores in the future -- by improving the primary and secondary schools that they attend, by holding teachers accountable and hiring effective teachers?

"It would be regarded as an intentional effort to exclude those groups..."

Except it wouldn't be an effort to exclude those groups. It would be an effort to include the most qualified, which you're arguing for here -- what Quayle did was wrong because it excluded someone more qualified than him. Intentions matter. There's no school out there trying to make a whiter (or let's be realistic -- yellower) complexion for their student body. That's not the reason that they'd admit only the most qualified, because they happen to be more Asian and white than the average applicant. That fact is secondary and beyond the admissions officers' control.

Althouse is right, there shouldn't be back door admissions for the rich and famous and connected. An obvious extension is that there should not be back door admissions for the properly pigmented.

Even though I partied too much as a frosh and soph undergrad (and have the grades to prove it), I got into computer science grad school because I scored over 1500 (out of 1600) on the GRE. The great thing about standardized tests is that they do provide a single standard.

Once human judgement is introduced the probability of corruption in the admissions process goes way up. People are inherently corrupt.

Or do we try to address it at its roots, by doing whatever we can to increase those minorities' scores in the future -- by improving the primary and secondary schools that they attend, by holding teachers accountable and hiring effective teachers?

There is nothing the schools can do to fix the problem. It doesn't have a thing to do with schools or money per student or tests or holding teachers responsible. The problems are to be found in the homes and cultures and as such are un-fixable by outside sources like the government ... unless you are willing to confiscate kids from incompetent mothers and absent fathers.

I think the dean was right to admit Quayle. It's a fact of life that sometimes it's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil. There is no rule prohibiting applicants from meeting with the dean is there? So what is wrong with it?

If I hired a lawyer to do something for me, I would hope that he would be able to work smarter, be more creative, look for unconventional solutions, and use his powers of persuasion to get the job done. I think that is what the dean saw and rightly recognized that as a strong qualification for law school.

The truth is there will never be a perfect fair system. Objective tests are about the fairest but they can be arbitrary and exclude students who probably should be allowed in. Legacies are going to be a factor, as are kids whose parents give big donations to the school.

And I absolutely do not have a problem with a school choosing based on a disadvantaged past and diversity of culture. But that should not be a racial thing, but tracking different sabermetrics than skin color. How does say a black kid from a upper middle class family count as more disadvantaged over say some poor white kid?

And a kid with drive, who overcomes a bad childhood to get into school, shows skills that probably indicate a higher ability to acheive than some kid who had everything handed to them.

An inside job by two professors who have their own interests on display. This "case" really has nothing to do with affirmative action!

But white old geezers? They sure do have a stake in the system we call "affirmative action." While they never once have to call attention to a stinking student who graduated ... by using their "special card" for admission.

You don't even have an obama to point at! He went to Occidental!

Why could these two old white geezers do this? Easy peasy. They've got tenure.

It seems sad to me they could foist this up in Madison ... As if they're trying to turn the tides ...

While our country remains deeply divided ... where most people don't want to own either label! Be it on the left. Or the right!

Was their complaint that the Admissions fell short attracting Black kids?

What if the top picks, offering admissions to Blacks and Hispanics ... got turned down by students who chose other schools?

Kids know how to read lists.

They prefer "top tier." You don't have "top tier" to offer.

All the other weights remain the same!

You'll lose a few students to psychosis. Others to drugs. And, alcohol.

At least pregnancies can continue of a woman wants to do this. She doesn't have to be married.

A thief breaking into a house is commiting a criminal act. Quayle didn't break the law. He just went one step further than simply mailing in his papers.

If what Kelso says is true Quayle was rewarded for his initiative and verbally persuasive abilities. I see nothing wrong with that. A genius who can't verbally comminicate effectively but aces teh LSAT, etc, probably would not have reached the heights that Quayle did.

ws4, if I hired a lawyer to do something for me, I'd hope he wasn't a high-functioning moron like Dan Quayle. And I'd probably steer clear of graduates from his law school, since that school apparently admits morons. And I'd hope that I wouldn't find him performing open-heart surgery on my wife, just because he "took some initiative" and decided to give it the old college try.

He said that from 20 to 30 students benefited from the program in the two years it existed and that four or five were members of minorities. The program was abolished by the faculty because most of its students did not do well enough in law school.

If law cases were decided objectively then maybe all law students should be admitted to law school based on objective standards.

However not all lawyerly activities are held in courtrooms. Many lawyers practice business law, realestate law, etc. Also, if judges were truly objective, people wouldn't pay the extra money for a better lawyer. The real world is not run like a GRE or LSAT exam and the ability to succeed in the real world is something that needs to be considered in addition to the ability to meet predefined standards.

"Or do we try to address it at its roots, by doing whatever we can to increase those minorities' scores in the future -- by improving the primary and secondary schools that they attend, by holding teachers accountable and hiring effective teachers?"

Pasta, good point. I said something similiar on the AA thread a day or two ago. Affirmative Action tries to treat the symptom. But you need to fix the cause of the disparity.

It's basic business concept. If your business is suffering, you don't try to fix a symptom. You need to find out what is wrong and correct it.

I thought and still think that it was the moral failing of valuing the seen over the unseen. Quayle showed up in person: Here I am, see my worthiness! But all the other rejected applicants were human beings too. Imagine them, all of them, and what they might have argued in pursuit of their goals.

Althouse, you're proud of your children, right?

But think of all the millions upon millions of sperm that could have fertilized those eggs -- all of those potential human beings that never got their chance to exist. Imagine them, all of them, and what they might have become -- presidents and Nobel Peace Prize winners, perhaps!

Nelson Rockefeller was an East Coast RINO, but he was a hell of a lot smarter than you. He was not stupid. And I have never heard or seen anything from Mel Brooks that indicated Rocky was LePetomane's inspiration.

I suspect your muddled brain is confusing Rocky dying "in the saddle" with his "assistant," Megan Marshack and the title "Blazing Saddles," thus connecting the two to make some "what's the frequency, Kenneth?" point.

Freder Frederson said...If you opposed the Vietnam War and evaded the draft, did you truly visualize the person who went in your place?

The point is that Quayle didn't oppose the Vietnam War. He thought it was a grand idea, as long as he didn't personally have to sacrifice anything for it.

=======================We are a democracy. We are supposed to accept the will of the people in decisions. Your logic says that only people that support a war but who didn't serve should have moral guilt about avoiding service - despite the collective democracy-based decison to go to war. Whereas, someone that opposed a war, lost the vote - was free to then Draft dodge without a moment's concern about who "died in their place".

Your position and belief set is antithetical to what America stands for Freder. But that is hardly news to regular readers on Althouse's blog.

"But throughout the day the 41-year-old nominee was questioned about a report that he had been admitted to Indiana University Law School as part of a program designed for students whose grades and aptitude test scores were so low they would not have been admitted in the regular admission process."

Truly, Ann, you don't understand the meaning of the word "initiative". I'll give you a hint: if I have to ask you to show initiative, you aren't. I'll say this, though; its clearer now why you voted for Obama.

TW: shing. The shing were an alien race capable of lying telepathically in the Le Guin novel "City of Illusions".

"But I couldn't accept the law school dean's failure to treat Dan Quayle like the other rejected applicants. I thought and still think that it was the moral failing of valuing the seen over the unseen. Quayle showed up in person: Here I am, see my worthiness! But all the other rejected applicants were human beings too. Imagine them, all of them, and what they might have argued in pursuit of their goals."

You see, that's the thing about salesmanship.

Sales people that don't show up to ask for the sale? They usually don't get the sale.

Buyers don't wonder what might have been, only if.

I don't buy your meme that it is a 'moral failing' of favoring the seen over the unseen. No sale.

A system based solely on LSAT scores? Let's go back and implement that in 1990 so I can get into any school I want.

I understand your point. But it collides with broader point. Allowing subjective criteria to play a role in admissions leads to "unfair" results for those left behind. What Quayle did not is not really any different than making a case by listing all the great charity work you do in your application, or your singing talent, or skin color, or any other factor that may make you desireable to the school, but which has no bearing on your academic abilities.

But I couldn't accept the law school dean's failure to treat Dan Quayle like the other rejected applicants.

He did treat Quayle like the other applicants, at least the ones who had the initiative, intelligence to realize that persistence sometimes pays off and that they could potentially persuade someone in person better than on paper.

Think of all the stories of authors whose books were rejected time and time again. One rejection does not necessarily mean you have to go away and never return. This can work in the business world too.

"If you opposed the Vietnam War and evaded the draft, did you truly visualize the person who went in your place?"

My dad went for this very reason. He could have gotten a grad school deferment. He thought the war was a stupid idea and that it was being run badly. Yet he could not allow someone from his home town to be drafted in his place.

Patrick Chavis was the person that was accepted into medical school with lower scores than Allan Bakke.http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2639384/replies?c=12

Three months later, Jane Fonda's ex-husband, left-wing California politico Tom Hayden, heaped praise on Chavis in defense of affirmative action. "Bakke's scores were higher," Hayden wrote in an article for The Nation, "but who made the most of his medical school education? From whom did California taxpayers benefit more?" Sen. Ted Kennedy picked up the banner a year later, calling Chavis "a perfect example" of the need for lowering admissions standards in the name of racial diversity. The doctor, Kennedy crowed, was "making a difference in the lives of scores of poor families."

What the New York Times never got around to reporting, as JWR columnist Jeff Jacoby first noted and journalist William McGowan later chronicled in his award-winning book Coloring the News, is that the "difference" Chavis made in the lives of several young black women involved gruesome pain-and death-as a result of botched "body sculpting" operations at his clinic.

Even worse, he was let in the back door of the inferior of the two Indiana University law schools. Outside of Notre Dame, there is only one excellent law school in Indiana, and that is the Maurer School of Law in Bloomington.

After reading the many comments and immersing myself a bit back into some of the 'history' of 'Affirmative Action', it occurred to me that the 'affirmative' part has to do with liberals and how they self-identify.

Commenter tom scott's example is a chilling illustration of the danger of overlooking some tangible qualifications and instead accepting subjective attributes.

One of the most interesting things about the Bakke case is that the biggest hurdle Bakke originally faced in gaining admission to medical school was his age. He was considered too old at 32 and a number of medical schools said so.

Consider: How would things be different had Bakke not been discriminated against due to his *age*?

After all, had he been admitted to say, Northwestern (one of the schools which rejected him due to age), he wouldn't have filed the lawsuit that led to the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision.

It's not affirmative action if it is not exclusive to some arbitrary class of people. It is more analogous to the employment process, which starts with the submission of a cover letter and resume, then is followed up by an interview with the hiring manager.

While an interview may be unconventional, the submission of a letter to explain extenuating circumstances or a general apology is not.

It is also conventional to be interviewed, implicitly or explicitly, when applying for graduate school and thereafter.

From the limited information in the article, it would appear that Quayle's apology was well received by the dean. While this may have negligible value in a field such as engineering, it seems apropos for the legal field, which relies on argumentation and consensus.

I can't agree, Ann. I think a student who wants admission enough to try talking to the Dean is worth more to a school than is a student who tries talking to the Dean after it's publicly announced that you can always try taking your case to the Dean.

wv: paped. Which means either "got elected Pope" or "got your stupid-ass paper credentials in order so that you can do the job you're manifestly qualified to do," depending. Or, of course, it might be a misspelled "papad." You can tell who skipped lunch here ;-)

Actually, she should get points for marrying a man of Native American descent. Eskimo.

DBQ, as a Republican you are obviously unfamiliar with the inner workings of the 4-part PC test. There is no criteria for open-mindedness. Cripes, that's almost like judging character, or something amorphous like that.

Already one of the faculty is jumping up and down, complaining about ageism and lookism. But damn if I want to make it a 6-part PC test. I mean, that would just be ridiculous.

So let's run him through our good ol' 4-part PC test.

1. Money. Bourgeois. Definitely Bourgeois. He stinks of the middle class. Point off!

2. Race. Honky. Totally honky. Ought to give him two points off! But we are fair. One point off.

3. Sex. Male. Point off.

Definitely a privileged white male. But what kind of numbers does he have?

4. Numbers. Oh my God, this transcript is so old. It's from 1996 or some damn thing. What the hell has he been doing for fifteen years? Almost makes me want to take a peek at the essay. Almost. I guess we'll give him a point for good numbers from a decade ago. What a weirdo.

So now it's an Obama-Newt matchup. The privileged white male with the good numbers and the privileged black male with the bad numbers.

And it's a tie! Oh no.

Boy, I'm really going to be unhappy if Newt is the nominee. That would be 4-part PC test chaos!

At my law school, there is a rule against changing a grade, and this is the reason. You can't have every student pestering the professors for a better grade, and then it makes every student feel that they should take the time and have the nerve to argue for a higher grade. It's totally unworkable. And corrupt!

Well, speaking as someone who did that ...

Seriously, I was in a class where the rule was that you were automatically failed if you hadn't submitted a certain proportion of homework. I hadn't, and I went to plead my case before the prof. just before the final.

Then I took the exam, which was quite insanely difficult -- nine questions, at least one of which I had to leave entirely blank. Exam papers were outside the prof's office a day or two on, in grade order (this was another peculiarity of his), so I started from the bottom of the pile. And found my exam third from the top.

"Quayle was a privileged white male with bad numbers. No way did he belong in that program. He was like other people with better numbers who already were in. He didn't add diversity."

This statement demonstrates the assumption that underlies affirmative action: that women and minorities require some kind of assistance to be admitted because they won't be able to make it on their test scores alone. Is that really true? What if admissions ignored race and gender - would the student body necessarily be any less diverse? Or is affirmative action just letting in people who are "like other people with better numbers who already were in"?

Fine, let the universities discriminate based on affirmative action diversity quotas. Then, let's allow everyone else to discriminate based on whatever criteria they find important to hire someone. Let's say that a company decides that an applicant for the job might have gotten their degree from a university, not because they were the best student, but because they represented a race, gender, sexual orientation. Let that employer discriminate and not hire someone without the threat of being sued.

I avoided the draft by enlisting in the Marine Corps. No guarantees of anything, no guilt, nobody died in my place. I went where they sent me, which was not Vietnam.

However, I don't view those who joined the Guard as draft dodgers. Draft dodgers were the guys who went to Canada, until Jimmie Carter let them come back. Or the guys with the fake medical conditions...

They have to live with themselves, and it's a hell of a lot easier on the conscience to pretend principle than to admit cowardice.

This statement demonstrates the assumption that underlies affirmative action: that women and minorities require some kind of assistance to be admitted because they won't be able to make it on their test scores alone. Is that really true? What if admissions ignored race and gender - would the student body necessarily be any less diverse? Or is affirmative action just letting in people who are "like other people with better numbers who already were in"?

I know. I mean, how could Quayle have added diversity? He wasn't even female or anything.

Given that admissions departments are scrambling these days to admit more men while maintaining plausible deniability that they're discriminating against women, this has its comic aspect. It is not so funny when it's a case of one poor, first-generation-immigrant, minority, ESL student getting into a school rather than another, because one's surname is "Cho" and the other's is "Jiminez." No prizes for guessing which surname gets the preference.

wv: obblexhl. That seriously ought to be a pharmaceutical, though I don't know what it'd treat. Maybe it's troll repellent?

Quayle is white unlike the current beneficiaries of a leg up. He gets a legitimate pass on the affirmative action beef- certainly nothing more than less worthy minorities have received in the many year since then- if you don't like it, don't piss and moan about more affirmation action today. As to the draft issue, Vietnam was the first war in which wholesale call up to combat duty did not occur for the National Guard. Snivelers that did nothing in those days should STFU. Thank you and have a marvelous day!

Quayle was a privileged white male with bad numbers. No way did he belong in that program. He was like other people with better numbers who already were in. He didn't add diversity.

You couldn't be more wrong on this one. The program was designed for students whose grades and aptitude test scores were so low they would not have been admitted in the regular admission process. Quayle was a student with low grades and test scores, hence he belonged in the program.

You seem to be applying the stadards of early 21st century diversity programs to a late 1960s program with different goals. There were no "white men need not apply" restrictions on the program and Quayle was a perfectly valid candidate.

The conceit is not affirmative action or personal interviews or LAT scores. The conceit is that it is possible to devise an application process that is scrupulously fair. Life is so monstrously unfair that we like to pretend that the small slices of which we have control can be apportioned fairly. I imagine the ferocity with which people argue for their particular concept of fairness is proportionate to their anger at how unfair life truly is.....JFK and JFK Jr. were given every advantage in life, and some of their advantages came not from native gifts but from wealth and family strings. Well, no matter. Anyone reading this can reflect on the fact that life has treated them with far more fairness than it ever did the Kennedys.

Freder Frederson said...Your position and belief set is antithetical to what America stands for Freder.

And you are a racist Nazi. So don't presume to lecture me on what America stands for, because you don't have a clue.======================

Yet not a word to defend your position that it is immoral for someone who supports a war to draft dodge, get student deferments, even serve honorably in the guard or military function that had next to nothing to do with Vietnam combat. While at the same time, not immoral for a Lefty who loathes America and loves terrorist and enemy rights to do the same by claiming he is not bound by democratic votes to do "his share".

Claiming anyone was active duty/Guard and in the 23 million who served in that era but were not sent to Vietnam is a draft dodger who had someone die in their stead is just how fucking clueless Freder is.

Left with no defense, all Freder can do is scream "racist!", "Nazi!".

PS - One of the fun facts about John Kerry was he joined the Blue Water Navy for what he hoped would be a cushy officer's job, safe well off shore, and lacking a technical degree, no engineering spaces, DC, Comms, or weapons officer worth - gravitated into a role we call in the AF the "Colonel's buff sniffer". Substitute Captain and you see Kerry picking up the assignments that would please that needed less skill..and help him wheedle a shore position stateside so he could "resume the education that would serve America more than my present spot". As part of that, Kerry qualified to run the Captains skiff into a safe port in Nam. Bad move.When the Navy decided to go with a brown water riverine Navy to take the fight right to the enemy and support our Army and Marine brothers..(and keep Navy funding high) ...they demanded the Fleet cough up several hundred "surplus" officers to man the new Swift boats and another class of more armored coastal patrol craft.

Since Kerry was of little use compared to tech or Academy degreed line officers - and supposedly not well liked by his direct report or the XO as a Captain's butt sniffer, AND unfortunately for him qualified on the Captain's liberty boat - he was "volunteered" for the new "Swift Class" gunboat fleet.Much to Kerry's dismay.

The irony of course being Bush wanted to fly F-102s in Vietnam and put in for it and didn't get it..while Kerrys grand plan of a cushy safe job well offshore with the Navy was wrecked despite doing his best to stay out of Vietnam danger zones.

GUtless - "Vietnam was the first war in which wholesale call up to combat duty did not occur for the National Guard. Snivelers that did nothing in those days should STFU."

Freder, is that you under a different name?Or another person clueless that the 26 million who did serve had very important contributions to the nation through their service? That only 3.2 million ever got to Vietnam and less than 40% ever saw any combat? Add the 3 million COs who did honorable alternate service.

Salon says that Dan Quayle's father Jim was the shaker and mover who brushed aside obstacles for the former VP.

"During Danny Quayle​'s first semester at DePauw University, a professor rejected one of his papers because it assumed that Alger Hiss​ was guilty. Danny called his father. His father told him to resubmit the paper the way it was. If they won't take it, he said, 'we'll find you another college.'"

But the real influential relatives were Jim's in-laws. Dan Q.'s grandfather owned a string of newspapers which included the Indianapolis Star and the Arizona Republic. James Quayle bought the backwater Huntington Harold-Press from his father-in-law.

As always, it's worth watching out for hindsight projections and factoring such out as need be for the sake of analysis.

What, for example, did it mean in terms of consideration *at the time* to join the National Guard or the various Reserves, taking into account how they had been deployed previously in general and how they had been deployed previously *specifically*? For one example, at that time the Korean War would have been both a relevant and recent point of consideration. Of course, it wasn't the only one.

Another thing to consider is that Dan Quayle achieved both poor grades at DePauw *and* a less-than-impressive LSAT score. (Consider that many folks have a basis on which to argue on account of being strong in terms of one measure--grades--even if not being strong in terms of the other--a standardized assessment). Due to what little is known with regard to the discussion between Quayle and the Dean credited with his admission to Indiana University of Law School, we are blocked from both specific facts and context.

I swear, even with the magic and the clarity of the PC 4-part Test, I still have to do some googlin'.

What's up with that?

And I know what some of you are going to say. What about ideology? You know, intellectual diversity?

And I say...

Huh?

What's that?

Never heard of it.

You know what that sounds like? Sounds like they want me to read some damn essays. No! A thousand times no!

Just obey the magic and the clarity of the 4-part PC Test, and we will have all the diversity we need! I mean, look at Madison. It's a frickin' rainbow, man. It's a beautiful rainbow of diverse diversity.